


When words are required

by womanroaring



Category: The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:37:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanroaring/pseuds/womanroaring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Easter's almost upon Thisby and Gabe's about to come home for his first visit. But this is mostly actually about a miscommunication that I could just see happening between Puck and Sean, when it comes to something a lot of young couples are embarrassed to discuss, but which would certainly compound when you add religion and speaking less than the dead to the mix. </p><p>There will be more, as soon as I work out the order the words go in.</p><p>Also, I realised that I spelt "Connolly" incorrectly at first (it's fixed now!), but then so does everybody else (including Maggie on her own tumblr sometimes) so I've included both spellings in the tags to help people search :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Puck

“Do you have anything… else… you want to tell me, Kate?”

Father Mooneyham’s voice had been mild and sympathetic, which made me feel extra indignant, since there was not.

“If I had a doozy to confess, father, do you think I would have started with how I ate the last piece of apple cake?”

“Your brother might have mentioned that that Sean Kendrick stayed at your house the other night.”

“Did Finn mention that Sean had to stay unless he wanted to be blown away in last week’s storm? Did Finn _mention_ that Sean slept in _his_ room, not mine?”

This was absolutely true. Sean had slept in Gabe’s old bed, and I saw neither hide nor hair of him until morning, leading to me wondering when, exactly, Finn believed any possible fornication had occurred.

None had. Ever. Nowhere near. And it was starting to be a sore point with me, to be completely honest, as I would have liked to be -- well, at the very least a bit _nearer_ to it, by this point, despite Finn’s worry for my immortal soul.

The best I had to confess to the priest on that score was lustful feelings; but the idea of talking about such a thing to an old man in a dress seemed ridiculous. And there was also the little matter that I was not particularly repentant over my lustful feelings and planned to have them again.

“I’ve been bad enough, father, don’t start inventing sins for me,” I said, and sounded cross because I was. “What’s my penance for finishing off a cake I made with flour I earned myself?”

I really was earning my own flour now. Malvern had been as good as his word; he gave me a job mucking and wheelbarrowing. Sean hadn’t been back to the yard, except to collect his things. I wasn’t sure if he had actually resigned or was just on some sort of extended leave, to take care of Corr, whose leg was mending better than anyone had expected. Sean took him to the water -- just starting to warm up slightly now that it was nearly Easter -- every day.

Corr could now make the walk to the shore without limping. There was no question that he would ever be able to race again but if he had been a regular horse, he would most likely have had to have been put out of his misery by now. The expense of his care would certainly have outweighed his worth.

It hits me all over again that if Sean hadn’t bought Corr, Malvern probably would have put the horse down.

I expect this has occurred to Sean as well.

Perhaps that’s why he hasn’t been back.

“Just the one Hail Mary, Kate,” Father Mooneyham’s voice is saying. “If it makes you feel better. Just don’t forget that your brother loves you and he worries. Off you go, then.”

I had gone to confession after service because it was Lent, not because of any real need to get anything off my chest. There was money in my pocket and food in my pantry, my brother Gabe would be home in time for Easter Sunday mass, and I would now be going home to throw something together for lunch for Finn and Sean and myself before we all went to the beach.

I had my home and Sean had his stallion and Finn wasn’t washing his hands for twenty minutes at a go and everything was better than it had been for a long time.

Except that George Holly hadn’t been wrong when he had referred to Thisby as repressed.

I had kissed Sean on the cliffs, in his garden, in my garden, at the beach, riding Dove, by Dove’s stall, in Dove’s stall, on the pier and in various locations around the town. But that was all. Just kissing. He didn’t even seem capable of putting his arms around me for longer than a few moments under a roof.

It was almost like he was in a damned horse race. Or we both were. I’m not sure which one of us was supposed to be the horse but the sense that he was holding back might as well be splashed like paint everywhere around us, it’s so blatant.

There had been one time, just one, a few weeks ago, when it had been different. The tide had been extra low and Sean had taken me deep into a cave on the shore that I’d never even noticed before, with primitive paintings on the wall that were surely thousands of years old.

The thrill I had felt, at learning one of my island’s secrets, must have shown in my expression, because Sean made a particular face -- like I’d passed a test -- and run his hand up into my hair. Which had made me kiss him.

But this time it had been like we were the only people on the island, which was ancient and unknown but still home, all at once. Sean’s kisses had been hungrier, his arms had been tighter, his hands had been freer in ways they never had before or since.

The water lapping at our ankles had let us know that it was time to go, as the cave filled with water fast. Scarily fast. As happened so often with Sean, he didn’t actually say anything, but his face had seemed to speak an apology as we left, which I had wanted to insist that he take back, but hadn’t been able to work out how to. I wasn’t even sure which bit he was apologizing for.

I had tried to make it clear when we got home that I was keen to continue in the same vein, but he almost seemed to take my actions as forgiveness rather than encouragement. Again, the wordlessness of these communications made it impossible to clear them up.

Usually -- well, often -- we didn’t need words. But I had a feeling that this was going to be one of those times when they might come in handy. And that just seemed all backwards, which made me cross, and which was making sorting this out even more difficult.

When I get out of the church, two young men and a red stallion are waiting for me. Sean holds a white paper bag that is currently home to both a Palsson loaf and Finn’s hand. The hand is just in temporary residence, breaking a crust off. Sean has a patient look on his face that tips over into a small smile when he sees me coming.

My heart stalls in that way it does sometimes when he looks at me.

Sean’s filled out the tiniest bit as the year’s gone on -- he’s been working hard on the house, but clearly not as hard as he must have worked for Malvern, and the black circles under his eyes and the gaunt cheeks he had then are clearing away. His arms look less wiry, now, too -- like his muscles aren’t constantly being forced to eat themselves.

Our kiss hello is barely a peck -- Finn is with us and half of the island is still milling around, staring at Sean Kendrick and his lame water horse, probably discussing the fact that neither one of them looks as broken as he is supposed to be.

Lunch is leftover bean soup that Finn and I have already eaten twice but which I add some sausage to, this time around, which improves it dramatically. I steal a better kiss as Finn dumps the dishes in the direction of the sink, but there is no time to press the matter with Finn around and Corr outside making the chickens nervous.

Finn seems to genuinely enjoy Sean’s company now, for all his worry that he’s a risk to my immortal soul. At first I wondered if he was just missing Gabe, but he doesn’t seem keen to idolise Sean the way that he did Gabe, which is ironic, given the way that Sean is treated by the average person on Thisby.

We play on the beach, three of us with two legs and two with four, and we splash, and we laugh, and at one point the whole beach stops to watch Sean ride Dove along the sand, faster and faster, while I pull Corr along in the water to exercise him, showing off that he lets me.

It was a good afternoon but there is no real chance to talk to Sean and he didn’t join us for dinner -- he was in the middle of some repairs he wanted to get done while the weather held -- so I went to bed on Sunday nursing my disappointment and spent most of my working day on Monday considering my options.

I was currying a chestnut mare, pondering the merits of tighter clothing versus less clothing, when Malvern strode out to me.

“Finndebar,” he said by way of a greeting.

I looked at him. And looked at him some more, to make clear that I was waiting for the rest of his sentence. It was something I had learned from Sean.

Malvern’s eyes altered from slightly annoyed to calculating. I wondered why.

“George Holly’s just contacted me about her,” Malvern finally said.

Mr Holly had bought Finndebar right before the last races, but he hadn’t taken her with him back to America; rather, he had organized to pay stabling fees to Malvern until he was “ready to move her”. It had sounded extravagant and eccentric to me, but I had supposed that was fitting enough.

I continued to look at Malvern, wondering about that calculating look. I wondered if I was supposed to keep grooming the horse while he was speaking to me. I banged the brush against my leg.

“Could you ride her around to her new home once you’re done with that mare?” He finally said.

“Where is it that she’s going, now?”

“Why, to Sean Kendrick’s, apparently,” he said, smiling slightly at me with his ugly lips. I didn’t quite know that smile’s meaning, but I think he was pleased that the horse’s new home had been news to me. I wondered why. Malvern did so like his little games and I was even worse at them than Sean was.

“That should be fine, then,” I said, and started back on the horse. Malvern looked at me for another moment and then nodded and turned to leave, just as two other grooms entered the yard with a freshly bathed stallion. 

“Do you suppose Kendrick mounts her over her rear like a horse?” One was saying to the other, before they both looked up and realized that they weren’t alone.

They both turned the colour of the chalk cliffs on the north side of the island.

I went very red and Malvern went very still.

“Mr Colman,” Malvern said quietly after several tense seconds. “Given your performance in this yard over the last few months, I’m surprised you even recognize the rear end of a horse. You can finish out the day and then your services will no longer be required. Mr Pierson, I do not pay you to listen to gossip. Look smart with that horse there.”

Malvern nodded to me and then strode out of the yard.

Andrew Pierson gave me an apologetic sort of look. I didn’t bother looking at Colman, who had been a great friend of Mutt Malvern’s. The fact was, the comment had annoyed me more than it deserved because of its sheer inaccuracy. It struck me as quite unfair that everyone except for Sean Kendrick seemed to think it quite reasonable that we be going at it like animals.

I washed my hands and face and brushed my hair and my clothes down as best I could before collecting the broodmare. The ride to Sean’s was beautiful, all fields and rolling hills. But they were a bit wasted on me in my current frame of mind.

He was repairing the last dodgy wall of the stable -- the furthest from Corr’s stall -- when I arrived. He looked nearly done. He had been slowly fixing up his parents’ run-down old house since he left his flat at Malvern’s. He had started with Corr’s stall; his own room inside the house had come second.

His hair is windswept and his eyes are squinted against the afternoon sun and my heart does a little somersault as he sees me and smiles. I get off the horse and tell him about my conversation with Malvern, finishing with, “I think Malvern wanted to see if I knew.”

Sean stirs what’s left of his cement mix.

I drum my fingers on Finndebar’s halter.

“Holly hinted that was his plan for her,” Sean says eventually, motioning to the horse. “But I didn’t know. We didn’t discuss terms. I can’t guarantee Corr will be interested in her. He never has been before. And he’s started prancing in front of Dove again. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it.”

For a split second I feel no concern at all for the wellbeing of my horse, just an overwhelming annoyance that even half-lame, his horse seems more interested in getting his leg over than his owner does.

“I think there are a few things that we should talk about,” I say.

Sean’s sharp eyes flick to me. “If you get Finndebar settled in the final stall, I’ll finish this wall and then we can have a cup of tea.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sean

Puck looks around while I put the kettle on the stove. I’ve re-whitewashed the kitchen since she was last here, but all I can see are the two little boxes on the table. I turn away from them because I can’t think how to introduce the topic and staring at them isn’t helping.

Which is when Puck comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my waist.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and hold her arms to me, but I can feel in the way that she’s holding herself that she still has that restlessness in her posture that I’ve been noticing. I don’t know what it means and the not knowing has been making me nervous.

I’m still not used to her arms around me, even after all these months. No one had held me since I was a child.

She loosens her grip a little and I turn around in the circle of her arms and kiss the top of her head. She tilts her face up and I kiss down her temple, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth. Her skin is cold from her ride over but her lips are warm as they meet mine. Her tongue darts into my mouth and my arms tighten around her. I didn’t mean for them to.

The problem is this: all I know is that that church of hers doesn’t want us to do particular things together until the old man that lives in there has declared us married. But I don’t know where the line around those particular things starts and the idea that I might cross it without knowing, and that she might have to ask me to stop, is horrifying to me.

I have no one to ask about this and I wouldn’t know how to ask them, even if I did.

One of my hands slides down to the hem of her jumper. I ball it into a fist around the fabric to stop it and I try to calm down but I can’t think with her mouth on mine.

I pull back from her, kissing the top of her head again, holding her to me for one moment, two, three, four.

It seems, for just a second, like she’s going to say something.

She doesn’t.  

Then I reach over for the two boxes on the table and hand them to her. She opens one of them. It holds two gold wedding bands and a third ring with a ruby in it.

She just stares at them.

“These ones were my parents’,” I say. “My mother left, you know. Their marriage wasn’t what you’d call a good one. I’d -- it doesn’t feel right for us to use these.”

She nods and hands me the box back. The other box holds another two wedding bands, less highly polished this time, and a fede ring in an older design than what’s currently to be found in Skarmouth’s tourist shops.

“These were my grandparents’,” I say.

“How was their marriage?”

“Content until the end, my father said. They died the same winter.”

She picks the fede ring up, and we look at each other for a long moment, and I go to say _Will you not put it on_ , before I realise that it isn’t the right question and it is very much the wrong one.

I notice that my heart is thudding in my ears.

“We can’t get married any time soon,” I hear her say, finally, around the thudding.

I shake my head. “This house isn’t fit for it.”

“And I’m not ready to leave mine, I’ve only just won in back. And I don’t want to leave Finn, not when I can finally feed him something other than beans occasionally. Not when we’ve only just gotten used to Gabe being gone.”

I nod but my heart still sinks as she hands me the ring back, until she holds her finger out like an invitation, and says, “You do it.”

I slip it on her. It fits perfectly and that feels like a little gift from the island’s past.

I kiss her knuckle, feeling giddy. I hold her hand to my cheek, and then kiss her wrist a few times for good measure before reluctantly letting it go.

She eyes my reluctance and the two boxes and then says slowly, like something has dawned on her, “ _Sean_. Have you been -- did you want us to wait until we’re married before we -”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, like she’s waiting for me to interrupt her, and I do interrupt her -- a rare thing -- because I’m clearly missing something and am starting to feel an idiot. “No, it’s not me who’d be wanting to wait, I thought that you -”

“Sean Kendrick. Do you mean to tell me that you decided, without even speaking to me about it, that I must want us to wait, and _that_ is why you can barely kiss me?”

“Puck, your brother won’t touch a deck of cards in case God wouldn’t approve. The two of you are in mass every week. You went to confession just yesterday.”

“And what, that means that you couldn’t even ask me about it? We couldn’t discuss it?”

I open my mouth and close it again. I feel ridiculous arguing about this since it should feel like my birthday’s come early but the fact was that I _had_ dismissed the very notion of bringing it up, without a thought, because so much as broaching the topic felt like pressuring her.

I find that I can’t actually look at her for a second. For a couple of reasons. When I do, she has a small smile on her face, but not like she’s laughing at me. Like she’s laughing at both of us. She slides her arms around me again and buries her face in my chest and I hold her to me with a new lightness that I didn’t think I had in me this morning.

“Sean,” she says into my shoulder. “If I’m yours and you’re mine then I don’t see what difference it makes, what order things get done in. There are perfectly good reasons to not get married yet. There are no reasons to delay anything else.”

I kiss the top of her head and then pick up my parents rings again. “I’ll sell these, then, if it’s all the same to you. Do you think they’ll take them at Fathom & Sons?”

She nods. “Don’t take their first offer.”

I see Finn noticing Puck’s ring as soon as we head into their door for dinner. And I see him noticing the way that Puck curls against me after our meal and the way that I curl back. It would normally feel too private a thing to do in front of her brother but I find I just can’t mind tonight.

Finn looks like he doesn’t know whether to be more or less anxious about it.

The next day I go to the post office to see if there is word from George Holly, to tell me what he expects me to do with his horse. There is -- just a line, saying “I still want that red colt, Sean Kendrick” -- and money wired to my name for stabling for the quarter.

He’s paid me as much as Malvern charges.

I spare a moment to feel uncomfortable about this until I remember that I used to do all the work at that stable anyway.

Then I go to Fathom & Sons for my chore, then Gratton’s and Hammond's and Margate’s.

I walk back to my father’s house, my time my own, and breathe in the good briney island air and look at the colours of the sky and think about my grandmother’s ring on Puck’s finger and her arms tight around me.

When I get back to my father’s house, it’s to find Ian Privett waiting for me with Penda, who looks twitchy, not normal in a _capall_ at this time of year.

“Ho, Sean Kendrick,” Privett says. I nod in reply, taking in the way that the stallion doesn’t seem to want to keep all four of its feet down at once. I look my question at Privett.

“He didn’t enjoy the storm last week,” Ian says, “bashed himself a few too many times against his stall, I reckon. Now there seems to be something wrong with one of his hooves.”

I say, “Two of them, I think,” as I approaching the horse with a _shhhhh,_ trying to remember everything I know about him. He’s fast and prone to fighting with other horses when the November sea sings to him but I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen him out of racing season. He could be a completely different horse, now, and probably is. A bit of bashing himself against the stall still shouldn’t have been enough to injure him, but then I haven’t seen Privett’s stable.

“Do you have him?” I ask Privett, leaning down to check his hooves. There’s the memory of some bruising and I see what could be a small amount of inflammation. I take the reins and walk Penda around. It’s not too bad, but for a water horse, it’s strange, so I don’t wonder at Privett’s concern.

“Have you taken him to Malvern’s vet?” I ask, making a show of looking at Penda’s teeth.

“I thought I’d rather take him somewhere a bit closer to home first,” Privett says, like he means more than he’s saying. Like the way people have been talking to me all year when they bring me their horses instead of going to the Malvern yard, with glee in their eyes over it. “Do you think you could see what you can do? I’d pay you for your trouble. For your expertise.”

I look at Privett for a moment and then nod. He nods in return and then looks over at Finndebar, and Corr, before saying, “One of the race officials told me that they’re changing the rule sheet for the races this year. _Capaill_ mounts only.”

I just look at him.

“A rule about male riders was seconded, too, but it was voted down.”

I look at him for a moment longer and then say, “I’ll keep Penda for a day or two. I’ll bring him back to you when I’m done.”

When Puck comes for dinner the next day, she looks at the horses grazing by the stables and raises her eyebrows at me. “Breeding, are they?”

“That’s the plan,” I say, and smile at her before heating her something out of a tin for our supper.

I sit in the armchair by the fire after we eat and she sits not on the other chair, but on my lap, and we kiss and we kiss. I don’t stop my hands this time as they go searching for skin, and neither does she.

I am terrified by my happiness. But I mean to hold it fast.


	3. Chapter 3

Puck

Thursday afternoon, Malvern lets all of us but a skeleton crew leave early. We’ll do shifts over the Easter weekend; mine is Easter Monday, which I requested specially, since Gabe will be leaving first thing anyway.

I pedal my bike home via Fathom & Sons, which isn’t so much on my way home as really out of it. I think of Gabe arriving home, and of the chicken we’ll have for dinner, and of the soft bread Sean will bring, and how he’ll cut it with me in the kitchen and the face he’ll make right after I kiss him.

I open the door to the shop to find Dory Maud packing up the store’s fertility statue into a wooden crate.

“A wedding present for a couple with everything on the mainland,” she says with glee in her voice, by way of a greeting. “Catalogues. Catalogues are marvellous.”

I had promised Dory Maud and Elizabeth some new teapots, since they were all out of my last batch, also due to the marvellousness of catalogues. I had painted these ones with a new design of the horses from the cave paintings Sean had shown me, and numbered them one through five of 50.

I left the dead man off since he didn’t seem like a teapot thing at all.

Dory Maud stares at them for a moment, a strange smile pinching her mouth, then her sharp eyes flick to me. “Puck, my dear,” she said. “I had your young man in here the other day.”

“Oh yes,” I said cautiously.

“Selling his parents’ weddings rings.”

“Mmm?”

“Apparently he then went down to Margate’s to make his final payment on a new mattress. The big kind,” she adds with relish. “Anne Margate was in here to tell me all about it afterwards. “Getting the place ready for Kate Connelly,” she was saying to me. Of course, I kept the part about how he was paying for it to myself. Seemed a backwards trade to me, giving up the rings for the bed, but -” and here her claw-like hand darted out to grab my dirty one, so she could get a good look at the clasped metal hands around my finger, “- my faith in his honour has now been restored. How disappointing. Just how many rings did his father have in that house?”

She cackles as I yank my hand out of hers, and then, her eyes twinkling, adds “I told that old biddy Margate that the boy has a right to sleep on whatever he damned well pleases, despite the whole island seeming to think that he should make his bed on a pallet of hay with his head on a horse’s withers.”

I allow her words to mollify me slightly and then the money she gives me for the last batch of teapots mollifies me further. It’s going straight to the butcher’s, on a roast that will probably be nothing to a prodigal son now used to having meat on his plate, but which will be a treat for Finn and me, at least. And Sean, come to that.

I go to leave the cluttered store but my way is blocked by none other than Benjamin Malvern, entering the store and looking around like he’s entered another world.

“Kate Connelly,” he says. “What luck to find you here.”

The way that he says it makes me suspect luck had nothing to do with it. It is on the top of my tongue to ask him what I can do for him, but I am still practicing Sean’s trick of not falling for conversational gambits. So I just look at him until he goes on, which he does within moments, like he’s used to it.

“I wanted to ask you something before you left today but I didn’t manage to find a good opportunity. On a point of business,” he says.

“Me?”

“Yes. I’ve heard it said before that this island can be divided up into the things that I own, and the things that I don’t. But despite having paid you a wage for these many months, Kate Connelly, I have come to the conclusion that you will never be a thing that I own. I’m fairly certain that if I were to tell you tomorrow that you no longer had a job at the yard, you would go home to your brother and then continue surviving very happily. This means that you are one of the few people in my employ that I can trust to advise me truthfully.”

I wasn’t sure what Malvern was playing at. Was he deliberately making himself sound lonely? I looked at him blankly until he started to speak again.

“Last year, as you are well aware, I lost my head trainer, my head groom, several very valuable horses, and my son. And though spring has been with us several weeks, not a single mare has shown any interest in a single stallion, or vice versa, in my yard. The horses all act as if they’re waiting for something. And to top it all off, I am becoming increasingly aware that I am short someone capable of capturing me a single _capall uisce_ come this October.”

Malvern is starting to sound a little as though he is talking to himself, not to me at all, but then he looked me straight in the eye.

“I heard Sean Kendrick described once as this island’s horse priest,” he said, his words clipped now, and I realise that it is with sourness, “and my stables as its cathedral. I have the feeling that I either need to find myself a new priest or persuade my old one to return. Because I saw your pony with his red stallion the other day and three legs or not, if Corr doesn’t get her in foal by the end of the year, I’ll be very surprised, never mind Holly’s mare. Those will be the first new half-breeds that this island has seen in generations and they’ll be game-changers.”

He took a deep breath.

“What do you think it would take, to get me my priest back, Kate Connelly? Get those horses back in the cathedral that I’ve spent years pretending are my stables?”

I have no idea what to say. I have no answer for him. He barely waits for a response, however, before snapping, “When Dove gives birth to our island’s future, do you really think that old shack Kendrick’s been repairing will pass muster?”

“Sean _was_ the one who did do the repairing,” I say in response, and his eyes twitch like he wanted to flinch but couldn’t let himself.

“And I think if you had taken better care of the things that you own, Benjamin Malvern, you wouldn’t have found yourself in this situation to begin with,” Dory Maud pipes up from behind me.

The relish is once again clear in her voice and this time Malvern does flinch. When his eyes flick back to me, he looks like an old man for a moment.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a ready answer for you, Mr Malvern. I will have to think on it. Happy Easter,” I say, and I make for the door. I have to step close to him, since he had been blocking it, and he steps backwards to maintain his personal space, something I don’t think I have ever seen him do.

I head to Gratton’s, and I have to ask Peg Grattan many questions, since I’ve never made a roast in my life. I see her noticing the ring on my finger, but she doesn’t say anything about it, just confirms what time we’re too expect our young men home on Saturday, and charges me what I suspect is too little for my order.

Finn and I go to meet Gabe and Beech at the pier on Saturday in the Morris. The boys have new haircuts that make them look like they don’t come from here any more. Gabe looks older and taller than I remember, which is probably a fault of my own memory. He looks happier too -- happier than before our parents died, I think.

I find myself wondering how long Gabe had been planning to leave.

He has a huge duffel bag with him, which we find once we get home is filled with presents. He’s bought me some new paintbrushes, soft and fine, and Finn some new tools. There’s magazines, and bright new wool, and a whole bag of oranges. There’s also small bags of sweets -- kinds that I’d never seen before. Finn’s eyes are huge as he makes his frog face.

We’re busy trying one of each when Gabe snatches my hand to look at my finger.

“And what would this be?” He says, in a voice I can’t read.

“It’s a ring, Gabe,” I snap, snatching my hand right back. “You weakening your eyes at this new job on the mainland?”

“Hey, now,” he says, with a look at Finn, who, strangely, ignores him. “When were you going to tell me? When is this planned for?”

“No time soon,” I say, shying away. When he continues to look at me, I say, “It’s a promise, not an engraved invitation, Gabriel Connolly.”

Gabe purses his lips at me. “Well, now,” he says. “I suppose Sean Kendrick isn’t the sort of hat a girl wears for just one season.”

I stare at him for a moment before a surprised laugh makes it out of me. “What sort of a thing to say is _that_?”

“The sort of thing the girls say on the mainland,” he says, and then there’s a knock at the door, and Gabe is pulling Sean inside and making euphemistic references to congratulations being in order and Sean looks like he has no idea what to do.

Beech arrived for his share of the roast minutes later, thank goodness, although it did take an hour longer to cook than I had calculated. It was still a little bloody when I served it but nobody seemed to mind. Beech and Gabe entertained us all for most of the evening telling us about pubs they’ve been to, and bands they’ve seen play and fashions people are wearing. They tell us about movie theatres and strange foods we’ve never heard of and it all sounded very nice but it didn’t make me want to leave.

I see Finn picking at the hem of his jumper. I feel his question -- _do you even miss home at all? Do you even miss us?_ \-- in every jerk of his fingers. But it doesn’t sting me the way that it stings him, I think.

I serve tea after dinner in one of my new teapots. Sean smiles at it, then at me, and I almost don’t hear Beech joking that he wants his served with butter in it.

“It’s mint,” I say absently, reminded of my encounter with Malvern in the shop. I look over at Sean and he is suddenly still, and he goes even stiller when Beech says, “How is Malvern, anyway, these days? I bet he’s struggling without Kendrick, here,” and slaps Sean on the back.

“Yes, he is,” I say, and everyone looks at me, surprised, including Sean. It was like I’d uttered some sort of spell. Then Beech laughs and says, “Course he is!” and the moment’s gone.

How am I going to tell Sean about the strange request that Malvern didn’t quite make of me, to get Sean back?


	4. Chapter 4

Puck

The three of us go to the Good Friday service as a family the next day. I don’t think I had realized how used I had gotten to it just being Finn and me. I wonder if Finn has as well or if he has instead spent all this time feeling like something is missing in our immediate environment while we sit on these well-worn timber benches.

Corr is nowhere to be seen when we meet up with Sean afterwards.

“Did you walk?” Finn asks.

“Holly’s mare seems to be starting her time already,” Sean says, and Finn blushed blotchily. “I thought I’d leave them to it.”

 _Oh_ , I think.

Is he going to want me to leave Dove and Corr to it? I’d have to take her around there.

It might give me and Sean some time to … be left to it.

I wonder if his new mattress has arrived yet. And then I mentally slap myself, wondering why I bother going to church every week if I can march out and think of these things while the building’s not even out of sight yet.

Gabe doesn’t know the first thing about horse breeding but sounds interested enough when he asks Sean how breeding _capall_ with regular horses would be different to the usual pregnancies and births he would have helped with at Malvern’s stable.

“I don’t know for sure,” Sean says. “No one alive today on this island has seen it done.”

Sean’s eyes shift slightly, and I wonder what he’s leaving out of that carefully worded sentence. Gabe doesn’t seem to notice anything; he just claps him on the back and says, “Well, I’m sure if anyone can pull it off, it will be you, Sean Kendrick! Next time I come back I expect to see several little miracles grazing around your father’s stables!”

Finn crosses himself at that; I’m not sure “miracle” is the word he’d wanted used in this context.

We have our roast chicken for lunch, and it isn’t until much later, when Gabe has gone to Beech’s and I’m walking Sean home, that I can ask him what it was that he was leaving out, when he was talking to Gabe.

He’s quiet for a moment, looking at the road ahead of us, and then he says, “The stories say that as long as the horse priest is there, it should all go fine. Either that’s me, or it isn’t.”

I’m quiet for a moment, not having considered that this was something Sean could doubt, before I ask, “Will it really change so much? Breeding Holly the little red colt he wants?”

Sean nods. “ _Capall_ can’t be taken off the island. It’s the law. But men like Malvern have made their fortunes selling part-breeds. Except that I just can’t shake the feeling that Corr won’t -” Sean cuts off there, because we round a hill and come in sight of his home. As if to save him from having to say the words aloud, we see the horses.

Penda is acting very possessive of Finndebar.

And Corr is grazing on the far side of the field facing in the opposite direction in an almost pointed fashion.

“I thought that might happen. I’ll need to speak to Ian Privett about that as soon as possible,” Sean said, the hint of a sigh in his voice. “And Holly,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Malvern spoke to me about this the other day,” I say suddenly, before I can change my mind.

Sean listened quietly, as I repeated as much of the conversation as I could remember.

“Well, I have work to do here,” he said, after a pause. “And I think it will do Benjamin Malvern good to try a November in this island without good people to rely on. He knows where I am if he wants to come and speak to me himself.”

I imagine he is holding himself back from adding, _rather than trying to get to me through you,_ except that his face relaxes then, like it’s on its way to a smile and he takes my hand.

I think Sean knows I’m not Malvern’s route to anyone or anything.

 


End file.
